Silicon photonics has reached a level of maturity where foundries are able to produce complex circuits involving both optical and electronic components on a single chip. However, silicon lasers remain a key missing component to the complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) foundry device suite. To date, the main approach to integrated lasers are heterogeneous structures in which a direct-gap III-V wafer is bonded, then processed, on top of a passive silicon circuit. Variations of this method include depositing pre-processed III-V chiplets, although clever techniques to grow InP directly on Si are making rapid progress. There remains, however, a need for a gain material that can be deposited or grown directly on silicon. Moreover, ideally it would be beneficial to have a gain material that utilizes silicon not only as a substrate material, but also for mode confinement.